“Unlike others”, Philippe Steemans reveals, “I didn’t fall into it when I was very little. I chose my studies the day I enrolled at university!” At the age of 18, the young man was attracted by nature, the mountains, science, travelling, etc. He enrolled at ULg’s faculty of sciences, and was drawn to the geology classes in his second year. In 1980, he began a doctoral thesis in palynology, the science that studies spores and fossilized pollen among other things. But Philippe Steemans got his first job in the private sector: prospecting in Belgium and France on behalf of the company Carmeuse S.A., in search of new limestone seams that could be exploited in quarries. After a year, he was made head of the “extraction and dispatching department” at the Moha quarry. But with the feeling that he was moving further and further away from geology, Philippe Steemans resigned in order to return to the university, where he carried out surveys for Belgium’s Geology Department in particular. He became a qualified FNRS researcher in October 1990. Today, Philippe Steemans works in ULg’s Paleobotany, Palynology and Micropaleontology Department, the only sector of fundamental research of its kind! However, this has not cut him off from applied geology. “At the end of my thesis, I suffered from an identity crisis”, the researcher remembers: “in what way was I useful to society?” Very early on in his career as a researcher, Philippe Steemans established co-operations with oil companies such as TotalPetroFina, Petrobras, Aramco, etc. “It is probably the greatest personal satisfaction that I’ve gained from my work: the demonstration that fundamental research and applied research are closely linked and interdependent.”

Consult Philippe Steemans' list of publications on ORBi